New manufacturing facility opened to reduce lead times

7th December 2016
Posted By : Anna Flockett
New manufacturing facility opened to reduce lead times

The official opening of Warner Electric’s extended factory in Angers, France was celebrated in October. The new production facility consolidates Warner’s manufacturing activities to a single area, which has led to immediate improvements to lead times and the opportunity to further grow its product range.

Until now its manufacturing facilities have been split over two locations, 80km apart, with a Le Mans based site operating as a supplier to its headquarters in Angers. In 2014 the decision was made to merge the operations into a single site in order to simplify operations and reduce lead times.

Pascal Connan, Managing Director of Altra ECB Europe, explained: “We approached the project with clear goals in mind. We wanted to reduce our lead times by two thirds, further increase our on-time deliveries and create opportunities to further expand our product range and engineering capabilities.

“With all of our manufacturing under a single roof we eliminate the need to transport stock from one location to another and open up the possibility to one-piece-flow manufacturing. We now have dedicated moving production lines for each of our key product categories – each named after a local river. We’ve also improved the warehouse layout to make it more visual and help us to manage stock levels. Finally we installed a loading dock to speed up the loading of our delivery vehicles.

“We entered the new building at the start of 2016 and had reached our standard production levels by March. We’re now achieving improved production levels compared to 2015, and each month we are continuing to work towards our ultimate targets.”

As part of the celebrations, local dignitaries attended to formally open the site and take a tour of the facilities.

Also attending was Carl Christenson, the CEO of Warner’s parent company, Altra Industrial Motion: “As a company we believe in natural growth through internal investment – making improvements to ensure our products and services are the best available to our customers.”

Christenson added: “Warner Electric is an important part of the local economy here in Angers, and also a major manufacturer on the world stage. We’re committed to supporting the brand as it continues to move forward and we’re happy to celebrate its success today.”


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